Turning the tables on JD Vance, Stephen Colbert responded to the vice president’s defense of Donald Trump’s “racist and vulgar” AI-generated videos of Democratic leaders wearing sombreros by offering up his own deepfake clip of Vance.
In this instance, The Late Show host unveiled an AI-animated portrayal of the vice president engaging in sex with a sofa, leaning into the online memes that flooded the internet last year in the wake of a satirical hoax that claimed Vance wrote about having sex with an “inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions.”
“We’re joking,” Colbert snarked on Thursday night. “We’re having a good time.”
In recent days, the president has posted multiple deepfake AI clips of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and sporting a cartoonish handlebar mustache, all while mariachi music plays in the background.
Trump’s social media posts come amid the standoff between Democrats and Republicans on a stopgap funding bill, which has resulted in a government shutdown. The GOP and Trump, along with their right-wing media allies, have pushed misleading and inaccurate talking points that Democrats are shutting down the government in order to give undocumented immigrants free health care and gain “new voters.”
Democrats, however, state they are merely seeking to extend and restore Medicaid coverage to migrants with legal status and government protection. Before the GOP’s “One, Big Beautiful Bill” passed this year, American law allowed for multiple classes of legal immigrants to apply for and obtain Medicaid.
With other Republicans and conservative pundits mimicking Trump’s sombrero posts, which Jeffries and other Democrats have described as bigoted and peddling racist stereotypes, Vance brushed off the criticism and insisted the memes were all in good fun.
“Oh, I think it’s funny, the president is joking and we’re having a good time,” Vance said at a White House briefing on Wednesday, adding: “I'll say to Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.”
During Thursday night’s broadcast of his late-night show, which is in its last season after Paramount announced its cancellation just days before closing on a merger that needed the Trump administration’s approval, Colbert took aim at Vance for “making up stupid fear-mongering arguments” about the shutdown and healthcare funding.
“The Democrats, their whole argument is we are going to shut down the government unless you give a trillion dollars for medical benefits for illegal aliens,” Vance said in a news clip, prompting Colbert to retort: “No, it’s not their argument, beardo! No one is proposing that.”
After reiterating that undocumented immigrants are ineligible for federal healthcare programs and cannot sign up for the Affordable Care Act, Colbert turned his attention to Trump’s AI sombrero videos.
“Trump, he’s so desperate to sell the lie that Democrats wanna throw a medical money party at the undocumented that he has spent the past few days posting AI-generated racist memes depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a mustache,” he noted.
Quipping that this is “now our level of our political discourse,” Colbert pointed out that Vance doubled down on Trump’s “infantile bigotry” while airing his remarks from the White House briefing about how the president was merely joking around.
“OK, if that’s how we’re doing it, JD, then we here at The Late Show also enjoy humor,” the comic proclaimed before revealing his own “funny good time animation based on something that isn’t real to help end the shutdown.”
Colbert proceeded to air a heavily censored AI-animated video of Vance humping the cushions of a living room sofa with a sombrero on his backside, complete with high-pitched squeals. With the audience roaring in applause, Coplbert threw Vance’s defense of Trump’s videos back at him.
“We’re joking! We’re joking and having a good time,” the late-night star sarcastically declared. “Come on, it’s a joke. It’s funny!”
Colbert concluded by offering up his own proposal to Vance, much in the same vein as the vice president’s bargain to Jeffries about the sombrero videos coming to an end.
“If you resign as VP, I won’t keep showing that every chance I get,” he joked. “And I definitely won’t put it on all of our socials so people can share it and maybe roll it on a loop during their holiday parties this year.”
As of publication, Vance has yet to publicly react to Colbert’s bit. However, earlier this year, the vice president claimed that his favorite meme of himself involved the couch hoax, stating that “F***, Marry, Kill” post that circulated on social media involving a sofa, his wife Usha, and the Pope was “very inappropriate” but also “very funny.”
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